The Demon's Turn

The Exorcism

Exorcisms weren't what they used to be. Just like cars and baseball. For starters, no one liked to scream anymore or faint. Long gone were the women crying while they clutched their prayer beads and crucifixes and begged for divine intervention. The drama was what turned exorcisms into shows, but without it the demon might as well be a one-man reenactment of that movie The Exorcism. And not a good one either. More like the kind of show that only family and friends attended out of obligation complete with awkward applause at the end.

As a matter of fact, only immediate family of the possessed teenager had crowded into the living room full of outdated floral wallpaper and gaudy cat figurines broken up by old little league trophies and ribbons collecting dust. The wall of family photos in mismatched frames kept a log of school photos, showing a timeline of the smiling little boy growing into a grumpy teen too lanky and uncoordinated to make the football team. There were no tearful neighbors or friends begging for God to help. No congregation singing hymns while they waited for the priest. Just the beeps and dings coming from the phone of the possessed teen's little sister sitting in the corner with her legs draped over the arms of her chair. At twelve years old, soon she'd have her own grumpy teenaged photo on the wall. Back in the good ol' days people had fought for front row seats to watch him be exorcised. Now those lucky enough to have them didn't care.

The parents whispered on the sofa, acting as if their two children were too deaf to hear them arguing over how they should have discussed bringing a Catholic priest in together, but the father spent too many evenings in his office with that college-aged secretary of his and so the mother made the decision alone. And thank goodness too or nothing would get done around the house. The demon thought she should add updating the wallpaper to her chore list of things that would never get done. It'd clearly been waiting at least thirty years already.

If the priest didn't arrive soon, the demon would be begging to be exorcised to escape the stifling room. He went for a classic trick to mix things up: coughing up a cloud of flies. That was a personal favorite that made two women faint back in the summer of 1694 in Massachusetts. Everyone had been so terrified in the wake of the Salem witch trials that putting a good scare into them had almost been too easy. Unfortunately, the family was too busy arguing and clicking away on their phones to notice his magnificent trick. The mother swatted at the flies without so much as a pause in her accusations about how wearing low cut shirts didn't make her husband's secretary qualified.

The sister's phone let out a happy little tune of victory as she blew a fly away from it. Not like a demon was miles more interesting or anything. No, his pride wasn't hurt at all thank you very much. Finally, after a fourth fly attempted to land on her phone, the girl sighed in annoyance and went into the kitchen, grumbling the whole way about how she was missing Jessica's sleepover without a single worry about the state of her brother's soul. She was probably too busy playing Ur. Wait, no. That had been popular in ancient Mesopotamia. How time flew! Must be Farmville or the pokemens. He could never keep track of the latest fads and he would never understand why anyone would want to spend a whole fortnight playing one game either.

The longer he kept at it the more it felt like a miracle that they had contacted the priest at all, not that miracles were his department. Most people chose a therapist over a priest these days and even then it was amazing what they would explain away to avoid seeing one of those. He sighed. This family was hopeless, but that's what he got for choosing a Protestant family instead of a Catholic one. He needed to find one of those old-fashioned Irish Catholic families next. It'd been a few decades since he paid one of them a visit.

A gentle knock sounded on the door and he perked up. About time the priest had arrived. Now the true fun could begin. The mother answered the door after one last glare at her husband. She put on a sugary sweet voice for the priest. "Thank you for coming, Father Frank."